At Some Point, Don’t You Have To Just Wonder…
…whether maybe it’s the IRS’ fault? Somehow, I’m beginning to doubt that politicians like Kathleen Sebelius are sitting in their dark lairs doing their taxes and hatching nefarious schemes to screw the government out of seven grand.
I had a friend whose father was an IRS agent (like, the gun-carrying kind) who told me once that, if they wanted to, they could get convictions on just about anybody, because there’s always something somebody did, or didn’t do, that they could be called on if somebody cared to.
If that is the case, then systemic reform is needed. Unless and until that happens, politicians have to be held accountable to the same standards as the public in general.
Obama’s administration in particular is dependent on the IRS getting every penny it can out of the public. He has at no point supported tax simplification or reform.
On this issue, as on drug policy, there are people in prison for things that members of the administration admit to having done. That is not acceptable.
Comment by Rojas — 4/1/2009 @ 8:15 pm
Oh, I don’t disagree—and as with most regular people, you usually just have to pay up and you’re fine.
But of course, it’s the sort of thing where the majority of people who are guilty of such minor infractions—regular people I mean—do get away with it, because nobody pays the kind of attention to your taxes (and yes, I am including the IRS) as we do these last few decades to political nominees.
It’s sort of the “you commit a crime every 11 minutes” thing. It is indeed a higher standard, and part of that’s good for the reasons you mention, but part of that’s also ridiculous, because who cares.
And btw, I agree, and almost included, on the need for systemic reform. I remember Bob Dole in 96 in the Topeka Expocenter saying “Under President Bob Dole, taxes won’t be so complicated that you won’t need an accountant or a lawyer or both to do them. One page!”
Comment by Brad — 4/1/2009 @ 8:51 pm
I’m blaming Cheney’s moles.
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/31/hersh-cheney-behind/
Kidding aside, why does this kind of thing matter when a democrat is filling out his cabinet in a time of crisis.
In the past a Republican could fill out his cabinet with millionaires and not worry about their tax fillings as an issue.
Heck Bush’s problems with the SEC:
http://dir.salon.com/story/politics/feature/2002/07/12/harken/index.html
would have eliminated him from contention for any government position under current vetting standards. Is Obama self mutilating himself in order to appear cleaner than the past or are the tax issues being blown up by the media?
PS. part of the reason why there’s a IRS problem is because republicans slashed the IRS budget which means they are too understaffed to check the returns of the rich.
They don’t have time to catch your mistakes unless you’re poor or have a government position lined up, it seems.
Comment by thimbles — 4/1/2009 @ 9:22 pm
Actually, I think part of it is as you say gamemenship, which frankly the GOP has always been better at, but part of the Obama piece is he did campaign on a platform in large measure predicated on holding the executive to a higher standard. So in some ways he’s falling on his own sword here, which isn’t really a bad thing anyway, as Rojas alludes to.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody say that the problem with the IRS is they aren’t big enough. It’s actually probably true to a certain extent, I just haven’t ever heard it. Of course, it would cost much less if we reduced our tax code to a simplified structure, rather than just an amalgamation of legislation going back almost a hundred years, with obnoxious and nigh on indefensible additions from both sides in pretty much equal parts (which btw isn’t true for most cases—as you know bullshit equivocation annoys me—but it is mostly true in this one).
Comment by Brad — 4/1/2009 @ 10:25 pm
Hmmm. I’ve forgotten how to do the quoting thing… I suck… :(
“Kidding aside, why does this kind of thing matter when a democrat is filling out his cabinet in a time of crisis.”
Not to sound to over the top, but this seems like a truly terrible statement. Wasn’t this Bush’s raison d’etre? (Did I use that properly?) Just because we’re in a ‘crisis’, doesn’t mean that we should ignore right and wrong and embrace pragmatism.
That being said, this Sebelius thing seems really dumb. Glancing at it briefly, it sounded like she just made understandable errors. The mortgage thing was tricky and the charity thing was minor (3 of 49 charity contribution letters couldn’t be found?). Yep, she’s just like Ted Stevens.
As a side note, the IRS seems pretty good at catching errors (at least in their favor). I always do my own taxes and I’ve been contacted by the IRS about 4 times over the course of 7 years. They’ve always been reasonable about it and never fined me. I think they do use some logic in deciding whether you were attempting to defraud them or if you’re just an incompetent buffoon like myself. The two times I screwed up in their favor (that I know of), I caught myself when I was doing the following year’s taxes.
Comment by Redland Jack — 4/2/2009 @ 1:09 am
I hope that Bush hasn’t ruined “crisis” as a justification for reasonable actions / judgment. What Bush did was exploit crisis so as to suspend public judgment on policies unrelated (tax cuts) or detrimental (torture) to the crisis.
What I’m saying is that, in the midst of crisis, should we eliminate qualified people from contention for positions based on their tax returns when the government is already understaffed. Is that just being nitpicky.
Believe me, there are serious problems with Obama’s current policy which I’ve broached with people here in the past. I’ve not said we should suspend all judgment.
ps. Google search IRS and understaffed
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=IRS+understaffed
and you’ll see how far the public perception has lagged the reality.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/16/business/irs-more-likely-to-audit-the-poor-and-not-the-rich.html
http://hamptonroads.com/2009/03/plugging-holes-irs-enforcement
Comment by thimbles — 4/2/2009 @ 1:47 am
Redland Jack, to quote:
(blockquote)Quoted text here.(/blockquote)
Then replace the parentheses with “< " and ">” (if those didn’t display, the ‘greater than’ and ‘less than’ alternate symbols of the comma and period.
Comment by Cameron — 4/2/2009 @ 2:48 am
Thanks, Cameron.
thimbles – Interesting… though checking the links, it didn’t seem so much that the poor were being audited at a higher rate (1999 being the first year 100), but that the rich were being audited at a lower rate than in the past. From a revenue maximization goal, clearly auditing the ‘rich’ at a higher rate is desirable. On the other hand, fairness might dictate equal rates. Even if the rich have a higher rate of evasion, might it be ‘profiling’ to audit them at a higher rate?
I would say that whether people should be eliminated from positions should be done on a case-by-case basis. Errors shouldn’t disqualify you from most posts (though it is troubling that people making the laws can’t understand/obey the laws they’re making). ‘Intentional’ evasion should.
Comment by Redland Jack — 4/2/2009 @ 10:00 am
Ah but it is more profitable to audit the rich, so free market rules dictate auditing the rich often and intensively.
Comment by Mortexai — 4/2/2009 @ 6:50 pm